The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) (14 page)

We started in on the salad. From below voices chimed with the sounds of clinking dishes. Between bites Ben said to Tom, “We get the shrimp from the south.”

“I thought the border was closed.”

“Oh, it is. Definitely. Not the old border, though. Tijuana is no more than a battleground for rats and cats. About five miles south of that is the new border. It’s made of barbed wire fences, and a bulldozed strip on each side of it three hundred yards wide. And guard towers, and lights at night. I’ve never heard of a single person that got over it.” As he took a bite the other men at the table nodded their agreement with this. “There’s a jetty where the fence hits the beach, too, and beyond that guard boats. But they’re Mexican guard boats, see. The Japanese have the coast right down to the border, but beyond that the Mexicans take over. They don’t do too good a job.”

“Neither do the Japs,” Danforth said.

“True. Anyway, the Mexican guard boats are there, but it’s easy to get past them, and once past them the fishing boats will sell you anything they have or can get. We’re just another customer as far as they’re concerned. Except they know they have us over a barrel, so they squeeze us every trade. But we get what we want.”

“Which is shrimp?” said Tom, surprised. His salad was gone.

“Sure. Don’t you like it?”

“What do the Mexicans want?”

“Gun parts, mostly. Souvenirs. Junk.”

“Mexicans love junk,” Danforth said, and his men laughed. “But we’ll sell them something different someday. Put them back where they belong, like it used to be.” He had been watching Tom wolf his food; now that Tom was done, he said, “Did you live around here in the old time?”

“Up in Orange County, mostly. I came down here to school.”

“Changed, hasn’t it?”

“Sure.” Tom was looking around for the next course. “Everything’s changed.” He was still being rude, apparently on purpose; I couldn’t figure out what he was up to.

“I imagine Orange County was pretty built up in the old time.”

“About like San Diego. Or a little more so.”

The Mayor breathed a whistle, looking impressed.

When everyone had finished the salads the bowls were taken away, and replaced with pots of soup, plates of meat, stacks of bread, dishes of vegetables, pyramids of fruit. The plates just kept on coming, giving me chance after chance to smile at the blond girl: chicken and rabbit, pork pie and frog legs, lamb and turkey, fish and beef, abalone in big slabs—plate after plate after plate was set down, and the covered ones were opened for our inspection. By the time the girls were done, there was a feast on those tables that made Mrs. Nicolin’s dinner look like the ones Pa and me ate every night. Nearly overwhelmed, I tried to decide where to start. It was hard. I had a little clam chowder while I thought it over.

“You know,” said Danforth after we were well into it, “the Japanese are landing up there in your old home territory, these days.”

“That so?” Tom said, shoveling abalone onto his plate. The amount of food on the table didn’t seem to have impressed him. I
knew
he was interested in this stuff about the Japanese, but he refused to show it.

“You haven’t seen any of them in Onofre? Or any signs?”

Tom appeared reluctant to take his attention from his food, and he did no more than shake his head as he chewed, and then give the Mayor a quick glance.

“They’re interested in looking at the ruins of old America,” the Mayor said.

“They?” Tom mumbled, his mouth full.

“Mostly Japanese, although there are other nationalities too. But the Japanese, who were given the charter to guard our west coast, make up most of them.”

“Who guards the other coasts?” Tom said, as if testing how much they claimed to know.

“Canada was assigned the east coast, the Mexicans the Gulf Coast.”

“They’re supposed to be neutral powers,” Ben added. “Although in the world today the very idea of a neutral power is a joke.”

The Mayor went on: “Japanese own the offshore islands here, and Hawaii. It’s easiest for the rich Japanese to get to Hawaii, and then here, but we’re told tourists of all nationalities want to try it.”

“How do you know all this?” Tom said, barely able to disguise his interest.

Proudly Danforth said, “We’ve sent men to Catalina to spy it out.”

Tom couldn’t help himself, no matter how much he ate: “So what happened? Have we been quarantined?”

With a disgusted stab of his fork the Mayor said, “The Russians did it. So we’ve been told. Of course it’s obvious. Who else was going to come up with two thousand neutron bombs? Most countries couldn’t even afford the vans those things were hidden in when they went off.”

Tom squinted, and I thought I knew why; this was the same explanation he had given us in his story Johnny Pinecone, which I was pretty sure he had made up. It was odd.

“That was how they got us,” the Mayor said. “Didn’t you know? They hid the bombs in Chevy vans, drove the vans into the centers of the two thousand largest cities, and parked them there. Then the bombs all went off at once. No warning. You know, no missiles coming or anything.”

Tom nodded, as if a mystery had finally been cleared for him.

“After the day,” Ben went on, as it seemed the Mayor was too upset to go on, “the U.N. reconvened in Geneva. Everyone was terrified of Russia, especially the nations with nuclear weapons, naturally. Russia suggested we be made off limits for a century, to avoid any conflict over us. A world preserve, they said. Clearly punitive, but who was going to argue? So here we are.”

“Interesting,” Tom said. “But I’ve heard a lot of speculation in the last fifty years.” He started forking again. “Seems to me we’re like the Japanese themselves were after Hiroshima. They didn’t even know what hit them, did you know that? They thought maybe we had dropped manganese on the electric train tracks, and started a fire. Pitiful. And we’re no better.”

“What’s Hiroshima?” the Mayor asked.

Tom didn’t reply. Ben shook his head at Tom’s doubts. “We’ve had men on Catalina for months at a time. And—well, I’ll send you over to Wentworth’s tomorrow. He’ll tell you. We know what happened, more or less.”

“Enough history,” said the Mayor. “What’s important is the here and now. The Japanese in Avalon are getting corrupt. Rich Japanese want to visit America and do some sight-seeing. It’s the latest adventure. They come to Avalon and contact people who will take them to the mainland. Those people, some of them Americans, sail them in past the coastal patrol at night, into Newport Beach or Dana Point. We’ve heard there are hundreds of them in Hawaii waiting to do it.”

“That’s what you said.” Tom shrugged.

An exasperated scowl appeared on the Mayor’s face and was gone. As dishes were cleared from the tables he stood up and leaned over the rail. “Tell the band to play!” he called down. The people below shouted to him, and he limped past us into the house. Over the railing I saw the big white-clothed tables below, piled with food and crockery. From above the San Diegans looked wonderfully groomed, their hair neatly cut and combed, their shirts and dresses bright and clean. Again I saw them as scavengers. From down the freeway a bit a small brass band started to play some stodgy polkas, and the Mayor appeared, moving from table to table. He knew everyone down there. As the people below finished their meals they got up and walked in front of the band to dance. All around us the water and the shores of the lake were dark: we were an island of light, propped up over the gloom. Below they were having a good time, but with the Mayor gone, the group on the porch looked bored.

Then Danforth reappeared between the tall glass doors, and laughed at the sight of us. “All done stuffing yourselves? Why don’t you get down there and dance? This is a celebration! Get down there and mingle with the folks, and Ben and I will talk further with our guests from the north.”

Happily the men and women seated around our tables stood and filed into the house. Jennings and Lee went with them, and only Ben stayed upstairs with the Mayor to talk with us.

“I have an excellent bottle of tequila in my study,” Danforth said to us. “Let’s go in there and give some a try.”

We followed him in, down a hall to a wood-paneled room that was dominated by a large desk. Drapes covered a window, and bookcases covered the wall behind the desk. We sat in plush armchairs that were arranged in a half-circle facing the desk, and Tom tilted his head to the side in an attempt to read the book titles. Danforth got a long slim bottle from a shelf jammed with bottles, and poured us each a glass of tequila. Nervously he paced behind the desk, back and forth, back and forth, looking down at the carpet. He switched on a lamp that glared off the surface of the desk, lighting his face from below. It was quiet, no sound from the party outside. Solemnly he proposed a toast: “To the friendship of our two communities.”

Tom lifted his glass and drank.

I tried a few sips of the tequila. It was harsh. My stomach felt like I’d put an iron ball in it, I’d eaten so much. I balanced the glass on the arm of my chair and sat back, ready to watch Tom and the Mayor go at it again—though what kind of contest it was, I couldn’t figure.

The Mayor had a thoughtful, brooding expression. He continued to slowly pace back and forth. He lifted his glass and looked through it at Tom. “So what do you think?”

“Of what?” Tom said.

“Of the world situation?”

Tom shrugged. “I just heard about it. You folks know a lot more than we did. If it’s all true. We know there are Orientals out there on Catalina. Their bodies wash up on our beach occasionally. Beyond that, all we’ve heard is swap meet talk, and that changes every month.”

“You’ve had Japanese bodies washing up?” Danforth asked.

“We call them Chinese.”

The Mayor shook his head. “Japanese.”

“So that coast guard is shooting up some of the illegal landing parties?” Tom ventured.

Again the Mayor shook his head. “The coast guard is paid off. It wasn’t them.” He took a sip from his glass. “It was us.”

“How’s that?”

“It was us!” the Mayor said, suddenly loud. He limped to the window, fiddled with the drapes. “We sail up off Newport and Dana Point, on foggy nights or nights when we’ve been tipped off that they’re coming, and we ambush them. Kill as many as we can.”

Tom looked at the glass in his hand. “Why?” he said finally.

“Why?”
The Mayor’s chin melted into his neck. “You’re an old timer—you ask me why?”

“Sure.”

“Because we aren’t a zoo here, that’s why!” He began to pace again, bobbing around behind his desk, around and behind our chairs, behind the desk again. Without warning he slammed his right palm onto the desktop,
smack!
I jumped in my chair. “They blew our country to pieces,” he said in a strangled, furious high voice, completely unlike the one he had been using just a moment before. “They killed it.” He cleared his throat. “There’s nothing we can do about that now. But they can’t come sight-seeing in the ruins.
No.
Not while there are Americans left alive. We aren’t animals in a cage to be looked at. We’ll make them learn that if they set foot on our soil, they’re dead.” He took up the tequila bottle in a trembling hand and refilled his glass. “No stepping into the cages in this zoo. When word gets around that no one ever comes back from a visit to America, they’ll stop coming. There won’t be any more customers for that scum north of you.” He drank hastily. “Did you know there are scavengers in Orange County arranging to give guided tours to the Japs?”

“I’m not surprised,” Tom said.

“Well I am. Those people are scum. They are traitors to the United States.” He said it like a death sentence. “If every American joined the resistance, no one could land on our soil. We’d be left alone, and the rebuilding could get on. But we all have to be part of the resistance.”

“I didn’t know there was a resistance,” Tom said mildly.

Bang!
The Mayor’s hand hit the desk again. He leaned over it and cried, “That’s what we brought you here to tell you about!” He straightened up, sat down in his chair, held his forehead in his hand. Suddenly it seemed hushed and quiet again. “Tell him, Ben.”

Ben leaned forward in his chair enthusiastically. “When we got to the Salton Sea we learned about it. The American resistance. Although usually they just called it the resistance. The headquarters are in Salt Lake City, and there are military centers in the old Strategic Air Command quarters under Cheyenne, Wyoming, and under Mount Rushmore.”

“Under Mount Rushmore?” Tom said.

Head still cradled in one hand, face shadowed, the Mayor peered at him. “That’s right. That’s where the secret military headquarters of the United States always was.”

“I didn’t know,” Tom said, eyebrows gently arched.

Ben went on. “There are organizations all across the country, but it’s all one group really, and the goal is the same. To rebuild America.” He rolled the phrase over his tongue.

“To rebuild America,” breathed the Mayor. I felt that flush in my face and spine begin again. By God, they were in contact with the east coast! New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, England.… The Mayor reached for his glass and sipped; Ben jerked down two swallows as if it were a toast, and Tom and I likewise drank. For a moment there seemed a shared feeling in the room. I could feel the alcohol going to my head, along with the news of the resistance, this dream of Nicolin’s and mine come to life. It made a heady mixture. Danforth stood again and looked at the framed map on the side wall of the study. Passionately he said, “To make America great again, to make it what it was before the war, the best nation on Earth. That’s our goal.” He pointed a finger through the shadows at Tom. “We’d be back to that already if we had retaliated against the Russians. If President Eliot—traitor, coward!—hadn’t refused to defend us. But we’ll still do it. We’ll work hard, we’ll pray hard, we’ll hide our weapons from the satellites. They’re inventing new ones in Salt Lake and Cheyenne, we’re told. And one day … one day we’ll spring out on the world again like a tiger. A tiger from the depths of the pit.…” His voice shifted up to a scratchy strangled mutter that I couldn’t make out. He was half turned away from us, and he went on like that for a while, talking to himself in a voice that moaned and sighed. The lamp on his desk flickered, flickered again. Ben jerked out of his chair and went to a corner to get a kerosene lamp.